“The Gift”?
Along with Pablo Picasso, sure.
Sweet Jane has me torn - when they sing “Sweet Jane”, a chorus seems to be distinctly defined there, despite the music not even changing one singe iota during it.
As one-groovy as it gets, baby!
“20th Century” from Brad.
Jello Biafra with D.O.A. - Full Metal Jackoff is a 14 minute one riff tour de force. One of the greatest rock songs of all time, IMO.
Stormtroopers Of Death - The Song That Don’t Go Fast is shorter but fun(ny).
Harry Nilsson’s Coconut is a better fit: one chord, one groove, great song.
Well, there’s not much but the one riff backing all 15 minutes of Sister Ray.
And well, when the riff’s that good, why not hit it for 15 minutes straight?
And one chord songs? Oh yeah, gimme King Missile (Dog Fly Religion)'s “Take Stuff From Work”.
It’s A, and then a whole lot more A. With a side of A. It’s unabashed about it’s chord. Try to hold it back.
Band of Gypsys, “Who Knows?”
Almost anything by Bootsy Collins
Frank Zappa, “Apostrophe” (and several others)
“Detachable Penis”? “88 Lines About 44 Women”?
Interesting thread. I think of songs like Tomorrow Never Knows and Bo Diddley type songs like Who Do You Love.
I sometimes play songs as one-groove even if they’re not.
For a song like The (English) Beat’s Save it for Later - I play that as a single D A G groove throughout. Sells the song well.
And I use a very similar D A G A groove for First Cut is the Deepest.
For what it is worth, within the Blues, there are types of songs called Talking Blues: Talking blues - Wikipedia where a single chord progression or lick is played and a song is performed over it. One Bourbon One Scotch and One Beer by Thorogood is a modern variation.
I think the chorus of Sweet Jane is different than the verse. No B in the chorus. And there is a whole other section of the song that got sidelined over the years “Heavenly wine and roses…”
“One bourbon one scotch one beer” isn’t a talking blues. You should try Bob Dylans WW3 or a lot of others by him. It’s very specific form. Here is Chicken House Boogie by Charlie Ryan. Some of the lines he uses are traditional to talking blues.
Manish Boy.
Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street is all verse, no chorus. It’s like Like a Rolling Stone with the chorus (“how does it feeeel…”) removed.
Yeah, I would imagine there must be a bunch of Dylan that fits into this. I must confess, it’s one of the reasons I could never quite get into Dylan, no matter how hard I’ve tried over the years.
Excellent choice. Interesting how the groove/riff works well accompanied by several different melodic lines.
The** Peter Gunn** theme. Except for a tiny break, the bass line line is the same one-bar theme.
Here’s one where you may not even notice that it’s the same bass line through the whole song: “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads. It’s all the same F# and A pattern though the intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, outro. Now, it doesn’t fit the OP because it’s got very distinct parts, but I found it pretty amazing when somebody pointed it out to me.
The ones I always think of that have instruments and layers come in and out, but really hold a steady single groove are:
Ravel’s Bolero
Trio’s Da Da Da
Great, now I’m ear-wormed for the day.
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot.